


the surface of last scattering

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dubious Science, F/M, It Came From Outer Space - Freeform, It's The End Of The World And We're Going At It Like Rabbits Because Why Not, References To Mass Suicide And Mental Instability And Other Forms Of Apocalyptic Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-07-18 21:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16126832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: They exist as bodies in the space between heartbeats now, as lifelines adrift in the reckoning.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my piece for [The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com/)'s 2018 collection, [Two Solitudes That Meet](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RFFATwoSolitudesThatMeet). This year's theme was "celestial bodies" and I chose to write something that's very loosely based on the manga _Hellstar Remina_ by Junji Ito. This first chapter is actually being posted in absentia, as by the time you all read this I will be in Europe celebrating my birthday, but I'll post the second (and last) part as soon as I get back.
> 
> Many thanks to RFFA mods Vivien and Mnemehoshiko for making this dreck readable. Further comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism would be very much appreciated. Also, I apologize in advance to anyone in the STEM field for the butchered science xD

**April 2003 - May 2007**

 

_"There's some ill planet reigns;_

_I must be patient till the heavens look_

_With an aspect more favorable."_

_\- William Shakespeare,_ _The Winter's Tale_ _, Act II, Scene 1_

 

Ben Solo is fifteen years old when he first sees _the girl._ It's the usual Saturday get-together at the Damerons' place, the adults chatting and clinking glasses while Ben and Poe try to act like they're actually friends instead of classmates who have nothing in common save for their respective sets of parents going a long way back. _The girl_ dimples up at him from the flatscreen in the living room as she's trotted out onstage for photo ops at Sir Obi-Wan Kenobi's press conference— the famed British astronomer had discovered a new planet in the sky while looking through Gemini North on the summit of Mauna Kea, and he'd named it Remina, after his granddaughter.

 

_"But at home we call her Rey,"_ he adds with a chuckle that's politely echoed by the crowd at the British National Space Center.

 

"Kenobi was your father's mentor, wasn't he?" Kes asks Leia. "They worked at the SETI Institute together. I remember you telling me that years ago."

 

"Anakin's not my father," Leia grumps. "Luke may have forgiven him, but I sure haven't."

 

On the couch, Ben fidgets the way he always does when his mother disparages the long-dead grandfather whose life's work he finds fascinating— who had been, he thinks, a genius so ahead of the times that people had started calling him a madman at the very end. On the television screen, the girl— _Rey—_ is gamely answering the reporters' questions in her childish lisp and crisp accent. She's a cute kid, her hair done up in a quirky trio of buns, her dress so frothy and yellow that she looks like a tiny sunflower, her polished Mary Janes freshly scuffed from running around. The world instantly falls in love with her, in that distant, shining way that humankind has always loved the stars.

 

*

 

Remina— the planet, not the girl— is located halfway between Neptune and Pluto. Scientists wonder how they could have missed it before, leading to speculation that it drifts along a slow orbital path, vast even by cosmic standards, that brings it into Earth's solar system once every few thousands of years. With an apparent magnitude of -6.01, it's brighter than Venus, brighter even than the Crab Supernova that lit up the heavens for two years in the latter half of the eleventh century. To the naked eye, Remina exists as a blazing, icy dot just off AlnasI, the Arrowhead, in the bow of Sagittarius, as if the centaur were launching it at Scorpius' curved tail.

 

The night Ben leaves his parents' house for good, stumbling out the door with nothing but the clothes on his back and ten dollars in his pocket, Planet Remina is the first thing he sees, beckoning to him all silvery blue on the horizon. Inside the house where he grew up, Han's pressing a frozen steak to a freshly bruised eye while Leia screams after him.

 

"Ben, don't you _dare—"_

 

Despair makes his mother furious; in that, they are too alike. He hesitates, one foot on the walkway leading to the pavement. This is the point of no return. He knows that if he takes another step, he'll never be able to go back to the way things were, but if he turns around, he'll never be able to leave and things will always be the same.

 

The new planet glows sharply in the night sky. Gangly and too tall and eighteen years old, Ben thinks about ancient mariners putting their eye to the wooden sextant, measuring the angular distance between Polaris and the edge of the visible sea. In the days before sextants, before quadrants, before astrolabes, they'd take sight with thumb and little finger on an outstretched arm, using the heavens to help them find their way.

 

"Ben!" Leia shouts again— only, this time, her voice breaks, and he can hear her moving from the kitchen to the front of the house.

 

It's now or never. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Ben Solo steps _forward—_ towards Remina, towards an uncertain future.

 

*

 

From there, for him, it's thirteen months of hitchhiking, taking odd jobs, and sometimes sleeping in alleyways all over the East Coast. Ben is nineteen when he arrives in New York, ravenous, travel-stained, worn down to the bone, trying to shake off the grip of various drugs still lingering in his system. By this time, the space probe _Ninka—_ a joint venture between NASA and BNSC, launched back when he was in still in high school— has reached Saturn and will take another ten years to enter Remina's orbit.

 

Wolfing down the cheapest sandwich on the menu at a seedy, greasy diner, Ben watches on the news as Amilyn Holdo, head of the _Ninka_ mission, answers questions about the probe and what it hopes to find.

 

_"Doctor Holdo,"_ queries one journalist, _"what can you say about amateur reports that Planet Remina seems to be increasing in brightness as seen from Earth?"_

 

_"I think the key word there is_ amateur," Holdo replies with a pleasant smile. _"Many things can affect stellar brightness as viewed by the terrestrial observer. Cloud cover, reflection of city lights— not to mention that it's January so Earth is currently facing_ into _the Orion Arm of the Milky Way._ All _the stars look brighter at this time of year. In any case, we'll know more about Remina's properties another decade from now."_

 

Ben eats his sandwich and wonders if he'll make it to twenty-nine. It doesn't seem like enough to live for, but he'll take what he can get.

 

*

 

Two weeks later, he meets Snoke. And the rest, as they say, is history— albeit not the particularly pleasant kind.

 

* * *

 

 

**September 2017**

 

_"Follow the arc to Arcturus,_

_and on to Spica go;_

_Then turn northwest to Regulus,_

_the foot of the lion, Leo."_

_\- Anonymous astronomer's mnemonic_

 

Like every other city on Earth, New York is obsessed with Planet Remina. There are T-shirts, key-chains, commemorative perfumes in globe-shaped bottles. Music has changed as well— not _every_ song contains a direct reference to Remina, but they all sound softer and more hopeful, with grandiose themes of freedom and new horizons and the utter limitlessness of the human spirit. The same goes for literature and for everyday conversation. An oft-repeated quote these days is what former NASA director Daniel Goldin had said when they found possible evidence of Martian bacteria in the Alan Hills meteorite— _"We're now on the doorstep to the heavens. What a time to be alive!"—_ retooled, of course, for the new age of exploration that Obi-Wan Kenobi's discovery brought with it.

 

Astrologers complain that the new planet is throwing off their readings. Various minor religions— _cults,_ if one isn't being nice— claim it as a sign from their god. There are reports among the scientific community that it has changed position in the night sky but these are not confirmed by any authoritative body and mostly chalked up to its little-understood orbital path.

 

In a strange turn of events, NASA has gone mum when, before, they used to publish updates on Remina several times a month. Some say this is a cause for concern, given that _Ninka_ is supposed to arrive at the planet any day now, but the general consensus is that there's some inter-agency drama preventing them from being more transparent with the public.

 

"I mean, Britain pulled out of the mission years ago, didn't they?" the girl waiting in line at Starbucks is telling her friend. "Some budget thing. There isn't even a BNSC anymore— it's the Space Agency or whatever now. If I had to guess, I'd say that the U.S. government struck up some kind of deal with China or the Russians. They just aren't telling us because they know there's going to be backlash."

 

"I don't even think it's really a planet," scoffs her friend, a scrawny, gamer-looking type in a Bigfoot T-shirt. "It's just some unnaturally bright star they're using to distract us from the _real_ issues."

 

The girl rolls her eyes. "Yeah, but you also think the moon landing was fake, so—"

 

"If you look at the footage, the flag that Buzz Aldrin plants ripples in the wind! There's no wind on the moon—"

 

Kylo Ren listens to the argument in front of him with a trace of sardonic amusement. He's twenty-nine years old now, against all odds, and has long since left the identity of Ben Solo behind. Even as a criminal defense attorney in Snoke's employ, he's still faithfully keeping tabs on Planet Remina and the continued radio silence has prickled his curiosity, too.

 

After a much-needed caffeine boost, Kylo makes the long drive to Ithaca. There's something Snoke wants him to take care of. It feels like a test, but Kylo tells himself that he's more than strong enough. He has to be.

 

*

 

Remina— the girl, not the planet— is nineteen years old and also in New York. Specifically, she's majoring in astrophysics at Cornell. Kylo only knows that because she's something of a celebrity— and why wouldn't she be, with a planet named after her? _TIME_ featured her not only in last year's _Most Influential Teens_ but _also_ in their _30 Under 30._ There are several fan blogs dedicated to her and some tabloids even pay good money for her candids. She's beautiful and a genius, and everyone agrees that she will follow in her grandfather's footsteps and perhaps go on to even greater things.

 

Kylo doesn't actually expect to _see_ her on campus, though. The door to his estranged uncle's office bursts open and an assemblage of coltish limbs nearly barrels into him in the waiting room with all the recklessness of a college student in a hurry to make it to their next class.

 

"Oh, sorry," the girl says, politely stepping off to the side to make way for him.

 

The British accent is the first clue. The eyes are the second— huge, long-lashed, and hazel in color, meeting his for the most fleeting of moments before she flashes a small smile and rushes off, leaving him staring after her.

 

That was, without question, Remina Kenobi. _Rey._ As jaded as he is, Kylo can't help but feel a little starstruck.

 

He shakes his head to clear it, then squares his shoulders and steps into Luke Skywalker's office. He hadn't made an appointment but his uncle doesn't seem all that surprised to see him, the older man's expression unerringly calm as he looks up from the papers on his desk to watch Kylo shut the door. It's been more than a decade since they last saw each other, and all those years are etched on Luke's weathered face.

 

"You didn't come to the funeral."

 

Kylo ignores the reprimand, so mildly given, even though it stabs at his heart, drawing forth an old pain that he should not— _must not—_ think about. Not now. "This is a business call." He sets his briefcase down on Luke's desk and opens it to retrieve the contract he'd written up last night. "On September fifth, your former student, Richard Atherton Tarkin, committed an unfortunate act of vandalism brought about by severe emotional distress—"

 

"That's a fancy way of saying he had one too many and keyed my car because I flunked him last semester," Luke says. "Now, if I may hazard a guess as to why you're using that illustrious law degree to represent drunken frat boys—"

 

"I'm here on behalf of _Wilhuff_ Tarkin," Kylo brusquely interrupts, sliding the contract across the desk for Luke's perusal. "He's more than willing to settle. You'll find that it's an adequate sum if you agree to drop all charges, both in court and with the university's disciplinary committee."

 

Luke raises a bushy eyebrow at the amount printed on the document. "This is certainly more than enough for me to get my car fixed, buy a new one, _and_ retire, to boot."

 

"It is," Kylo agrees. "My client would prefer to avoid any nastiness that might encroach on his grandson's future."

 

"Wilhuff's not really your client, though, is he?" muses Luke. "He's your employer's friend. It's a regular old boys' club they have going on, with you as their lackey."

 

Kylo knows that it shouldn't hurt this much, that he shouldn't feel so small. He isn't a lost, scared child anymore. He made his own way in the world and his uncle should have no power over him. "Do we have a deal or not?" he snaps.

 

Luke regards him somberly for a while. Finally, he nods. "I'll drop the charges against the Tarkin boy. There's no need to pay me off. I will, however, require that you have lunch with me here at my office, every Wednesday, for a time period of four months."

 

Kylo's hands ball into fists. "You're out of your mind. You want me to come all the way to fucking _Ithaca_ once a week—"

 

Luke shrugs. "I really love that car."

 

* * *

 

 

**October 2017**

 

_"Bodies like the Earth follow the nearest thing to a straight path in curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points."_

_\- Stephen Hawking,_ _A Brief History of Time_ _, Chapter 2_

 

Wednesday has become Kylo's least favorite day of the week. The few lunches that aren't spent in tense silence end with him storming out of Luke's office at the tail-end of one argument after another— except that Luke doesn't argue. Not as the term is commonly understood. He asks innocuous questions, he rambles about the hazards of academia, he acts like nothing's wrong. Like there never was a boy who ran away from home one summer night and never saw his parents again. Like there never was an accident, or an only son missing from a funeral, or years and years of bad blood so thick that no one can untangle where it came from anymore, not even the people involved.

 

No, it's Kylo who does the shouting during these lunches. He tries not to, but Luke has always been very good at getting under his skin. Every time he loses his temper and leaves Cornell in a huff, it feels like his uncle has scored another victory in this sick game they're playing, but he can't help himself. It's actually oddly therapeutic, in a way.

 

The third Wednesday of October is one of the silent days. For once, though, it's not because of the deep-seated, long-standing Skywalker family issues. There's a pall in the air the world over, because Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead.

 

Based on what Kylo has gleaned from the news earlier this morning— the headlines that inundated his phone and the TV screen and the radio stations all throughout breakfast, meetings, and the drive to _fucking Ithaca—_ the astronomer passed quietly in his sleep, at the ripe old age of ninety-six. His only surviving relative is so far unavailable for comment— indeed, while approaching Cornell grounds, Kylo had spotted a herd of reporters being forcibly escorted away by campus police.

 

Luke is running his fingers over the paperweight on his desk, a green glass cube embedded with fragments of volcanic rock arranged in the shape of the Pleiades. His stir-fry takeaway from Dex's Diner remains untouched, while Kylo is taking sparing bites from his own carton. He doesn't have much of an appetite, either. Obi-Wan had been an institution in and of himself. It feels like the end of an era.

 

"He was a good man," Luke says at last. "He wasn't the most brilliant mind of his generation— when I studied under him at Oxford, he told me that all his life he'd had to work twice as hard as his colleagues. And thrice as hard as my father." Kylo looks up at that— it's the first time Luke has taken it upon himself to mention the other ghost in the room. "But that's the thing. Obi-Wan worked hard and never complained. When it all paid off in the end— when he could finally attach his name to, not just a discovery, but _the_ discovery— he stayed humble." Luke sighs, readjusting the paperweight with an air of finality. "I will miss him."

 

There's a tentative knock on the door, followed by a pair of strikingly familiar hazel eyes peeking into the office. Remina Kenobi looks absolutely distraught upon seeing Kylo, but she manages to say to Luke, "I'll come back, Professor—"

 

"No, no, Rey, it's fine." Luke hastily gets to his feet. "This is my nephew, Ben. We're just having lunch. Please come in." He pulls up a chair for her right across from Kylo and waits with such patient expectation that she must feel like she has no choice but to take a seat.

 

Of all the awkward situations Kylo's ever been thrust into, this no doubt takes the cake. Rey's obviously been crying, her cheeks blotchy and her nose rubbed pink. She doesn't quite look at him, choosing instead to focus her gaze on the paperweight, her red-rimmed eyes so clear and glassy that he swears he can see the starry isles of the Pleiades reflected in their depths. Which _definitely_ means he should stop staring.

 

Kylo returns to his meal with a concentrated vigor. The last thing she needs right now is to get creeped on by the likes of him.

 

"How are you holding up, Rey?" Luke asks gently as he settles back in his chair.

 

"I— I was fairly all right for a bit." Her voice is thick, forced out through a lump in her throat. "I got the call when I arrived on campus and then I couldn't leave because of the reporters, so I went to class instead. I didn't know what else to do. But everyone's been hounding me all day and—" She breaks off, and it's around this point that Kylo realizes he must come across as the biggest jerk in the galaxy for shoveling stir-fry into his mouth while she talks about this. Flushing, he sets his carton down and folds his hands into his lap, head bowed in what he _hopes_ is a respectful, attentive gesture while also not being too weird.

 

"Can I just hang out here for a while, Professor?" Rey asks. "Finn and Rose are in class and I don't really have a lot of other friends—"

 

She sounds all choked up again, and Luke hurriedly says, "Of course you're always welcome in my office. By all means, stay as long as you like. Have you eaten?" He pushes his untouched food towards her. "Dex makes a mean stir-fry."

 

"I'm not hungry."

 

"Take it with you, anyway, so you don't have to worry about food later," Luke urges. "Don't worry about your classes, too, as I can circulate an e-mail to the rest of the faculty posthaste. Do you need help arranging your flight home?"

 

"Oh, God, I need to do that, too, don't I?" Rey mumbles more to herself than to anyone else in the room. "I just— I don't know— I want to sleep, or something—"

 

Luke casts a helpless glance at Kylo, as if he thinks Kylo is somehow anywhere near remotely equipped to deal with this set of circumstances. "Ben, why don't you drive her back to her apartment?" he suggests. There's a hint of a plea in his tone and it galls Kylo, but Rey’s hunched in on herself and it tugs at some frayed thread in his heart.

 

"No, that's too much trouble," she starts to protest, already shaking her head. "I'll take the bus—"

 

"It's fine," Kylo grunts, the first words he's ever said to her since she barreled into his life a month ago. He doesn't want to think about her taking the bus, doesn't want to think about the strangers that will gawk at her or the media that might be lying in wait while she tries to keep it together, all by herself. "I'll drive you home."

 

*

 

All eyes are on them as they make the trek to his car. Some people have the grace to not be so obvious about it, but others flat-out stare and whisper among themselves as they pass.

 

"That's Remina Kenobi—"

 

"Poor girl—"

 

"So sad, I heard she doesn't have any other family left—"

 

Rey's a trooper, though. Her chin is raised, her shoulders are squared, and her stride is purposeful through the corridors and over the pathways. She's _power-walking,_ in sneakers and skinny jeans, and Kylo can't help but feel a sense of admiration.

 

They don't talk as they get into his car, or as his car peels away from Cornell. She opens the Waze app without being prompted and he lets the smooth A.I. voice guide him while The 5th Dimension's "Age of Aquarius" medley plays on the radio. It's during the second chorus— _When the moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars—_ that he glances over at her and notices that her eyes have started to leak again.

 

It's all too understandable, but Kylo panics. He's never been in a car with a crying woman before. "Wednesdays are terrible by design," he blurts out. "It's right there in the name."

 

"Pardon?"

 

"'Wednesday's child is full of woe,' and all that. Plus, it's Woden's Day— Odin, Mercury, whatever— and he was a real bastard. It's the most miserable day of the week."

 

Kylo's gaze is on the road, but the weight of Rey's stare directed at his profile is tangible. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asks.

 

He shrugs in self-defense. "It's good to have something to blame, right?"

 

He's fully prepared for her to demand that he pull over so she can get as far away as possible from the weirdo driving the car but, instead— after a while— she says, "Maybe."

 

_Let the sunshine in,_ the radio blares. _Open up your heart and let it shine on in..._

 

*

 

There's a few reporters gathered outside Rey's building, so Kylo drives around the block and they head up via the fire escape. He doesn't quite know _why_ he insists on escorting her to her unit, but it may have something to do with how pale she is, how lost she looks. In theory, he has far more important things to do than play nursemaid, and he never claimed to be a good person _anyway,_ so he settles on resenting Luke for putting him in this impossible situation. Like he told Rey, it's good to have something to blame.

 

Her studio apartment is overrun with foliage— flowers in a vase on every table, bonsai arrangements lining the mantelpiece, a veritable garden of miniature cacti on the window ledge overlooking Cayuga Lake. The walls are painted a bright yellow and every surface not occupied by plants is crowded with kitsch— figurines, picture frames, seashells, novelty clocks, and souvenirs from practically every corner in the world. It's riotous, and far cozier than Kylo's own penthouse suite on the Upper East Side could ever hope to be.

 

"I have a hoarding problem, I know," Rey says, hanging up her coat by the door and then immediately going over to sit on the couch. She stares at the fireplace, unseeing, and Kylo thinks she might be in shock.

 

He pulls out his phone and starts looking up flights to the UK, because that's a more productive course of action than hovering at the edge of the living room waiting for her to dismiss him. "Do you want to leave today or tomorrow?"

 

"Tomorrow, I guess," she replies in a worryingly distant tone of voice. "It's already afternoon, so I doubt I can pack and get everything in order _and_ make it to JFK in time for the last plane."

 

"Okay," says Kylo, selecting an early morning flight, "so I'm going to need your details—"

 

Rey bursts into tears. Kylo isn't exactly surprised by this, but it _is_ what he'd been afraid of.

 

Grabbing the box of tissues placed next to a pot of bright yellow sunflowers, he sits beside her on the couch as her sobs wrack the air. And he just stays there as the minutes pass, offering one tissue after another as she blows her nose and lets grief shake her slim shoulders so thoroughly that she seems to be in danger of being physically ripped apart. He has no idea what to do. He's helpless in the face of such shattered love.

 

She stops crying as abruptly as she started. He will learn in the months to come that she never does anything halfway; it's always either _stop_ or _go._ She breathes out, then blows her nose again, then blinks, the last few tears sliding down her freckled cheeks.

 

"He wasn't my real grandfather," Rey says, still staring off into space. "Not my biological one, anyway. You knew that, right?"

 

"Yes." Kylo wishes he didn't, wishes belatedly that the world had seen fit to leave Remina Kenobi's personal life alone instead of etching the details into the pop culture hivemind. Obi-Wan had adopted an infant he found abandoned in a hospital parking lot, had taken to calling her his granddaughter because he was too old to be her father. It was just one of those things that people did, but the media had made it seem like the juiciest of scandals when the truth was dug up.

 

"He wasn't my real grandfather," Rey repeats, "but he treated me like his own and he taught me all he knew, and I didn't even get to say goodbye."

 

Kylo stands up to fetch her a glass of water— again, because that's more productive than sitting there and not having the slightest clue what to say. She drinks it gratefully, and then they pore over his phone to arrange her flight.

 

"I can't fly out in the early morning," Rey explains. "The buses here don't start running until, like, 5:30, and it's a five-hour trip."

 

"God, this place really _is_ in the middle of nowhere," Kylo can't stop himself from saying. She stiffens in her seat, and he immediately backtracks. "That just slipped out. I'm sorry."

 

"It's fine." Her gaze drops to the floor. "You're already going out of your way as it is."

 

"I don't mind," he tells her, feeling like an unconscionable asshole. "Truly, I don't." He remembers the day he found out his parents had died, how he'd shut himself up in his dorm for a week, with no one to turn to. _I want to do for someone the things no one ever did for me._ Surely that can't be so wrong. "If you want to take an earlier flight, I can drive you. I live in the city, anyway."

 

Rey blinks at him. "So you'll, what, stay here overnight?"

 

"Or not," Kylo mumbles, the tips of his ears turning warm. Never mind being an asshole— now she must think he's a serial killer. "Forget I said anything."

 

"N— no, I mean—" She swallows her words as she trips over them, and then she nods. Their eyes meet again, and hers are so wide, so filled with unguarded terror at the thought of being alone. "If you really don't mind— yes. Please stay."

 

*

 

Kylo retrieves his laptop from the car and spends the rest of the afternoon answering e-mails while Rey drifts back and forth between packing her bags and shooting off texts and e-mails of her own— probably to her friends, her research group and lab mates, and whoever she's coordinating with in England. He's just making an educated guess there because they're hardly saying a word to each other, opting instead for tiny head bobs or half-smiles every time their gazes happen to collide across the apartment.

 

He _does_ get her to agree to eat, eventually. Evening's rolled around by then and they order a pizza, washing it down with the ginger ale she'd stashed in the fridge as they sit cross-legged on the floor, at opposite ends of her coffee table. The lights have been turned down but moonbeams filter in through the window, spilling over the miniature cactus garden, and high up beyond those spiky, silvered silhouettes is Remina— the planet, not the girl— a crystalline blue speck in the velvet-black sky.

 

Kylo squints at it, brow creasing. It's impossible to confirm without equipment of any sort, but he's almost positive it shouldn't be _there_ at this time of night.

 

Rey looks at where he's looking, a slice of pizza stilled halfway to her lips. "It's moving, you know."

 

"All planets move," Kylo says, realizing too late that he's basically _mansplaining_ to an astrophysics major.

 

"This is different. They went to Obi-Wan last year but he didn't know what to make of it and neither did they— NASA or Roscosmos or CNES or the ESA or any of them. That's why they issued the gag order. They don't want anyone to panic until they've figured it out."

 

Later, he will wonder _why_ she told him, if it was that curious recklessness brought about by emotional turmoil that made her do it, and what about him made her decide that he was the kind of person she could say it to. But, in the here and now, he's only aware of the sound of Rey's voice and the way the moon catches on her skin, so that she glows even in the dim light, when she says, "Planet Remina is heading straight towards Earth. It's picking up speed, and it shows no sign of stopping."

 

* * *

 

 

**November 2017**

 

_"At first I thought you were a constellation."_

_\- Sleeping At Last,_ _Venus_ _, Verse 2_

 

Rey is still in England when someone leaks what would from then on be called the Stardust Files to a multitude of websites. It's a slew of classified reports and directives all concerned with the same thing— _Ninka_ reached Remina ahead of schedule, because the planet somehow moved further into the solar system and is now hovering somewhere near Jupiter. If it continues along its current trajectory, it will collide with Earth in five years.

 

The world devolves into chaos. On the news, people are rioting, are sobbing in the streets as public officials appeal for calm. Some decry it as yet another elaborate hoax, but the general atmosphere is that of panic. New York is a mess of traffic jams, of loud and fearful crowds, of mass exoduses to places of worship.

 

_How is it over there?_ Kylo messages.

 

_Same as over there, I suspect,_ Rey replies.

 

They've been texting almost daily since exchanging numbers at the airport— _Can we, uh, keep in touch?_ she'd asked, so falteringly, sounding like she was already bracing for him to say no— and sometimes it's small talk, but most of the time their conversations run deep. At first, he's her metaphorical shoulder to cry on, her willing ear to rant to as she goes through the bereavement process, but after a while that escalates into them telling each other about their day and discussing everything under the sun. He's surprised by how well they click, by how witty and engaging she is, by how he very quickly falls into the habit of looking forward to hearing from her.

 

(The first time his heart skipped a beat when her name lit up his phone, after a week's worth of messages, the admonishing thought of _She's nineteen, you idiot_ shot through his mind, which scared him away from contacting her for a couple of days.

 

Rey hadn't pushed but, on an a particularly trying afternoon when he'd made the shopkeeper Snoke wanted to buy out cry, she'd sent him a picture of an outrageously fluffy Chow Chow she'd met at the park. Kylo had been sitting alone in his apartment, feeling like shit, and her text had come in, complete with a slew of that ridiculous smiling emoji with the hearts for eyes.

 

_Cute dog,_ he'd finally replied.)

 

Now he's stuck in traffic, idly watching masses of people stream into the corner grocery store and leave with huge, full bags. _Are the Brits panic buying, too?_ he asks her.

 

_Yeah,_ she confirms. _It's Y2K all over again._

 

He snorts. _What would *you* know of Y2K?_

 

_I've seen documentaries,_ she shoots back. _I've read Snopes._

 

Because there's no one around to see it, Kylo allows himself a wry grin. His memories of the last few days of 1999 are vague, but some images have stuck— people stocking up on flashlights, canned goods, and bottled water, all in preparation for the upcoming calendar shift that would crash every computer system in existence.

 

It hadn't happened, of course. His parents had laughed off the whole thing, proud of the fact that they hadn't been those gullible fools on the news fighting over the last parabolic heater at the wholesale, but Kylo had seen his father breathe a small sigh of relief when the family desktop computer clocked in 12:00 AM on January 1, 2000, without bursting into flames.

 

_The world's always ending for someone,_ Kylo tells Rey. _We as a species love making up stories about the apocalypse because we're fascinated by the thought of our own destruction._

 

_This isn't a made-up story, though,_ she says. _This is happening._ Before he can come up with a response, the dots flicker on his screen as she starts typing again. _I'm flying back to the States ahead of schedule. I've a feeling they'll ground all flights soon._

 

And they do.

 

*

 

Rey manages to take one of the last planes from London to New York before a civilian travel ban is imposed practically worldwide, the governments of various countries citing security concerns. Kylo picks her up at JFK and, not wanting her to get swept into the chaos of having to commute to Ithaca, offers to let her camp out at his place until things die down— if they're ever going to.

 

She walks into his penthouse suite wide-eyed, taking in the stark minimalism that must seem so foreign compared to her own colorful, personalized apartment. He sets her luggage down on the floor, trying to will away the sweat on his palms and the nervous little jumps in his stomach that had materialized the moment he saw her again, her bright red coat a splash of color amidst the throng at arrivals. She's foregone her trademark three buns today; her chestnut brown hair falls past her shoulders, framing her delicate features, gleaming in the afternoon light. He's always known that she's beautiful, but he hadn't been prepared for how _radiant_ she actually is. For how comely he finds her, now that he sees the person beneath the famous face.

 

They stay glued to his television that night. The world is expecting an emergency address from U.S. President Mon Mothma, but what they get, instead, is the President standing in what looks like a war room with several other official-looking individuals. Kylo recognizes some of the leading military defense specialists, but Rey is able to put a name to every face that he doesn't know or is only vaguely familiar with. They're scientists, pioneers in their respective fields from seemingly every single continent on the map. In the background is a white banner bearing a crimson emblem that resembles a pair of curved wings capped off by a three-point star, hovering above the words _ALLIANCE TO SAVE HUMANITY._

 

Mon Mothma takes the podium. She confirms the truth of the Stardust leak, which causes a rustle among the media who had been invited, but is quick to add that there's no reason for panic, as all world governments have long been working together to come up with a solution.

 

_"The Alliance is currently studying Planet Remina and searching for a way to prevent the collision. We are confident in our ability to succeed. In the meantime, we ask for your cooperation in maintaining peace and order,"_ Mon Mothma says. _"We_ will _survive this, I promise you."_

 

Her tone is firm and her expression is resolute, but Kylo can't help thinking that the message is hollow. Sitting on his couch, Rey clicks off the television with a huff and, in the ensuing silence, wraps her arms around herself as if overcome by a sudden chill.

 

"What would happen," Kylo asks, all dry mouth and knots in his throat, "if two planets collide?"

 

"I mean, it's not exactly a new concept," Rey mutters. "There's the giant-impact hypothesis that birthed the Moon, and there's Phaeton, the planet that supposedly existed between Mars and Jupiter and disintegrated into the asteroid belt when it was struck by another large celestial body— although that's based on the Titius-Bode law of orbit at semi-major axes, which doesn't have much of a theoretical foundation—" She breaks off, apparently realizing that she must have lost him, and flashes a wry half-smile in his direction before veering back on topic. "In 2009, the Spitzer telescope picked up traces of a high-speed collision between two planets that must have happened a few thousands of years ago, in a system that's a hundred light years away from Earth. There was nothing left but clouds of amorphous silica rock and tektites."

 

Kylo has no idea what a tektite is but, before he can ask, Rey gets to her feet. From where he's leaning against the wall beside the couch, arms crossed, he watches her pad over to stand beneath the huge skylight in his living room, her gaze tipped upwards. He knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that she's looking at Planet Remina.

 

"The results of an impact event would hinge on the size and speed of the projectile," she says at last, with an odd detachment. "If Remina were around the size of Earth and it hits us at the speed of our own orbit, our planetary surface would be completely melted and the debris from the collision will form a new asteroid belt orbiting the Sun between Venus and Mars. Depending on the direction and location of the collision, the impact may change the tilt of Earth's axis upwards of 5 degrees. Depending on the direction and location of the impact, the collision may cause a change in the length of the day of up to 1,500 hours. But it won't noticeably shift the Earth's orbit, so at least it has _that_ going for it."

 

_Five years,_ Kylo thinks. _Five years left to live._

 

"It's named after me, too," Rey says. This time, her voice is tinged with wonder. "'I am become death, destroyer of worlds.'"

 

"Oppenheimer was talking about the war," Kylo tells her in what, in hindsight, is a poor attempt to console.

 

"No. He was talking about the point of no return." Rey looks at him then. "Come here."

 

He approaches her with the strangest of sensations, like the two of them are also on their own collision course. He already knows what she wants, what she needs— to be touched, to be reassured that she's alive in the here and now— because he feels it, too. It's a desire that supersedes all rational thought.

 

"Ben," Rey breathes once Kylo's mere inches away. It's the name Luke introduced him with, the only name she knows him by, and he's never bothered to correct her. Why hasn't he corrected her? The question flees from his mind as she closes her eyes and he leans down into the space between them, kissing her full on the lips. It's not gentle, he doesn't know how to be, but she opens for him the way the flowers she loves so much bloom in the sunlight.

 

*

 

And afterwards— _oh,_ afterwards, the kisses burning like fire, they stumble into his bedroom, they tear at each other's clothes, and he pushes her down onto the mattress where her hair fans out against the pillow as she looks up at him with a gleam of challenge in her eyes. Already hard and aching, he settles between her spread legs, his gaze roving over her elegant collarbones, her pert breasts, her flat stomach, the slight flare of her hips, all bathed in moonlight. He's quite certain that she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, _especially_ when she props herself up on her elbows and tilts her head to the side to get a better peek at the tattoo snaking down his ribs.

 

"Is that _the Drake equation?"_ she asks, utterly baffled and amused and, God, it's a weird thought to have in this very moment but she's so damn _cute—_

 

Kylo flashes a small smile, because it feels good to be able to smile when the world is about to end. He kisses Rey again, covering her body with his, his hand sliding down to the apex of her thighs. Neither of them are in the mood for foreplay; perhaps next time— if she ever lets him do this again— he can linger over her, but in the present moment they're both too pent-up and there's only the wet, grasping heat of her sex and the painful throb of his erection and good old human biology, the drive to perpetuate the species cranked up to staggering levels in the face of an extinction event.

 

"I'm on the pill," she says, correctly gauging the line of his thoughts. "You can come in me, if you want."

 

Kylo's vision nearly goes white from the mental image alone. The girl is doing a far better job at being the death of him than the planet ever could.

 

*

 

She's so incredibly tight when he enters her that he has to grit his teeth and run through the Constitution preamble in his head to avoid embarrassing himself this early on. She starts whimpering when he's halfway in, her hips squirming against his as her legs wrap around his haunches. "Too big," she complains, the words muffled into his collarbone, and damn if that doesn't stoke something primal deep in his belly— but at least he still has enough presence of mind left to realize that she needs more stimulation, and so he bows his head over her breasts, taking one nipple into his mouth. She _sighs_ at that, arches her spine as he sucks, her nimble fingers moving between their bodies to play with her clit.

 

It's easier from there, time passing slowly beneath shivering constellations. His lips find hers once more, one last, sloppy kiss before he starts fucking her in earnest, the musky smells and lewd sounds of sex filling his room. There is a certain franticness to it, and he can't help but wonder how many people in the city, in the world, are currently doing the same thing, desperate to feel alive, desperate to hold back the dark for just a little while longer.

 

* * *

 

 

**December 2017**

 

_"I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again."_

_\- Anais Nine,_ _Fire: From A Journal of Love_

 

The _Juno_ space probe has long since been rerouted from its polar orbit of Jupiter and is now working with _Ninka_ to transmit data from Planet Remina back to Earth. The first images are broadcasted on the dedicated Alliance channel— a terrain that's mostly glacial water, mist, and strange crystalline landmasses that resemble sheets of glass, all enveloped in a hazy blue atmosphere.

 

Kylo thinks it's beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way, but few people agree with him. Humankind's love affair with the new planet in the sky has turned into one of fear and hatred.

 

They now call it the Hellstar.

 

*

 

It's the last Wednesday lunch with Luke, four months having passed since that fateful day in September. Kylo should feel relieved but, instead, his gaze follows his uncle as the older man putters around his office. After all, this might be the last time they ever see each other.

 

"Ah, here we are," Luke pronounces in satisfaction, retrieving a bottle of Celanon Semi-Dry from some corner cabinet. "A special little vintage to celebrate."

 

"Celebrate what?" Kylo asks.

 

"The young Tarkin's deliverance, of course," Luke replies smoothly, pouring a generous helping into each of the two glasses he'd set up on his table to accompany the pad thai from Dex's Diner.

 

Kylo frowns. It is the same now as it was then, every word from either Luke or Han a dig at him, somehow, although he's never been able to put a finger on precisely why. _You're being too sensitive,_ Han had told him once. _The world isn't out to get you, kid._

 

"I don't think Cornell will stay open for much longer," Luke reflects as he and Kylo eat their noodles and sip their wine. He's staring out the window, which shows a campus that's far too empty for a weekday afternoon, even if the semester _is_ almost over. "Attendance has dropped to an all-time low among both the faculty and the students. Everyone wants to be with their families during such dark times."

 

"Yet _you're_ still holding lectures," Kylo points out. Rey had cut their phone call short last night because she was studying for one of Luke's quizzes.

 

"Not much left to do at my age," Luke says ruefully. "When in doubt, terrorize the sophomores."

 

It gnaws at Kylo again, that hint of guilt, that tremor of sleaziness at how young Rey actually is. He busies himself with his pad thai— there's no way Luke can know or even suspect, but he still can't look his uncle in the eye for a second longer.

 

"I dreamt of Planet Remina last night," Luke confides after a while. "Or the Hellstar, I should say. The curve of its globe filled our sky and we were all weightless, floating in zero gravity. We skipped over the tallest buildings and bounced from one city to the next like superheroes. It was a child's dream, but a good one, all the same."

 

"'We'?" Kylo repeats.

 

"Everyone was there." Luke inspects the ruby-red depths of his wineglass. "Your mother, your father, you, and all the rest— everyone I ever loved."

 

"Bullshit." Kylo is fifteen once more, resentment thick on his tongue. "It's too late for any of that."

 

Luke nods gravely. "I know. But the world is ending and there won't be another chance to tell you, I suppose."

 

*

 

When Kylo leaves his uncle's office for the last time, it's not in what can exactly be called a _huff._ He's pissed off, yes, but also slightly lost. Like one of those wooden boats from long ago, set adrift with clouds covering the North Star, and perhaps _that_ reversion to the nonsensical analogies of his boyhood is a sign that he's well out of it, the whole Skywalker mess. Whatever Luke hoped to accomplish these past four months, it never came to fruition, and it's all for the better that they both move on.

 

_Isn't it?_

 

Kylo brusquely shoves these thoughts aside. He'd promised Rey a coffee while he was in her neighborhood and he doesn't want to take his foul mood out on her. She doesn't reply to his text that he's on his way, and the reason soon becomes apparent when he pulls into her street— there's a police car outside her building and Rey is gesticulating wildly to an officer on the front stoop. Kylo hurriedly parks his car and strides up to them just in time to catch the last few words of Rey's sentence— _"— nothing was stolen, I already_ told _you—"_ before she falls silent upon noticing his approach.

 

The cop turns around. He looks familiar enough that Kylo suspects he's a transfer from the city. "Attorney Ren." A sandy-haired head jerks in greeting. "You her lawyer?"

 

"Yes," Kylo automatically says, ignoring the freefall of his stomach at being addressed as such, the clamminess of his palms at the confusion that shadows Rey's face. "What's going on here?"

 

"Miss Kenobi's apartment was broken into earlier this morning. She came home from school and the door was ajar," the cop perfunctorily supplies. "The landlord— Mr. Plutt— says he didn't see anything. We've advised her to check her valuables—"

 

"For the _nth_ time, it wasn't a burglary!" Rey snaps, color rising to her freckled cheeks. "They broke my windows and tore up my plants and wrote shit on my wall—"

 

"What did they write?" Kylo asks. When neither Rey nor the cop are quick to respond, he continues, "Let me see."

 

*

 

The more sardonic facet of Kylo's nature considers the vandals' work amateurish and unimaginative. Most of it is just _BITCH_ and _CUNT_ plastered repeatedly on the walls in bold crimson letters. There's a rather melodramatic _YOU'LL KILL US ALL_ above the overturned couch, which, really, is more hilarious than it is anything else. Scrawled on the opposite wall is the only thing that even seems remotely threatening, a bible passage written so huge it takes up nearly the entire space— _THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE._

 

The floor of Rey's living room is a minefield of broken pottery, scattered earth, and fragmented glass. Kylo's fists clench at seeing her beloved plants destroyed like this, leaves ripped from the stems and little cacti littering the carpet like pincushions haphazardly dumped out of the world's most well-armed sewing kit, joining the sea of dislodged picture frames and knickknacks. The bedroom's not unscathed, either— someone's taken a knife to Rey's mattress and pillows and hurled the nightstand at her mirror. It's sheer maniacal destruction and the cop doesn't appear to _care;_ although he assures Kylo that they've already taken the requisite photographs and fingerprints, he's distracted, his gaze flickering every so often to the window. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out— he's watching the sky for the Hellstar to make its appearance, which is what everyone seems to be doing these days, as if the planet will suddenly swoop down upon them in broad daylight like a bird of prey.

 

"The front door was unlocked, meaning the intruders had the keys," Kylo snarls at the cop. "You have to take the landlord in for questioning."

 

"Mr. Plutt already said he wasn't involved in any way—"

 

"And you _believed_ him, just like that?" Rey bursts out. "He's the only other person who has the key to my unit—"

 

"Calm down, miss." The cop glances at her with something akin to revulsion, and that's how Kylo realizes there's no help to be found here. Not if the fucking _police_ think Rey had it coming.

 

The officer makes his exit shortly afterwards, with a half-hearted promise to stay on the case. Kylo and Rey are left alone in the ruins of her apartment. Her bottom lip is quivering and she looks so small, and he's seized by the urge to wrap her up in his arms. But he's not sure if she'd welcome such a gesture, and so he remains where he is, grasping for solutions far more practical and achievable than comfort.

 

"Pack your bags," he tells her at last. "You can't stay here."

 

Rey lifts her chin with a small glimmer of defiance. "I could just bolt the door—"

 

"Damn it, Rey!" Kylo hadn't meant to raise his voice, but it's too late to take it back now, his worry and frustration leaking through. "We've already established that people know where you live and your landlord can't be trusted. So come with me to my place and just do your remaining coursework online and, hell, I'll drive you if your professors insist—"

 

"That's too much— I can't ask you to do all that—"

 

"You're not asking, I'm _offering—"_

 

"And _why?"_ she lashes out, matching his volume. "Why do you even care? What's in it for you? There's tons of other women you could be screwing who have less baggage and certainly _none_ of them will be a constant reminder that you're going to die in five years—"

 

He kisses her, desperate to shut her up. She must have been holding back her tears for ages because they spill freely at the first violent meeting of lips. It's a hard kiss, all teeth. It tastes like fear and salt.

 

*

 

The drive to New York is silent, with her bags in the trunk and the air heavy between them. He turns on the radio at one point, but the first station features some religious zealot blathering on about the end of days while the second has a DJ relaying instructions on how to build an underground shelter in one's _very own backyard._ Kylo gives up, switching the whole thing off and focusing on the road instead.

 

They're passing through Binghamton when Rey asks, "Why did the officer call you Attorney Ren and not Solo?"

 

Kylo's fingers tighten around the steering wheel. "I had my name legally changed a decade ago. You and Luke are the only ones who still refer to me as Ben."

 

She doesn't like that— he can tell in the way she sits up a little straighter, out of the corner of his eye. "It's a bit fucked up that I'm only learning this now."

 

_Nothing about this situation is not fucked up,_ he thinks sourly. "I didn't think it mattered, that it had any bearing on... this. On us. It's just a name."

 

"Then why did you change it?"

 

He knows that he should spare her the messy details of his past. The parts that aren't boring or stupid are painful to relive, and he doesn't have the slightest clue how to effectively verbalize any of it in a way that she will understand. He doesn't even understand it himself— not entirely, anyway. He left before it could all be made sense of, and the ensuing years have brought neither clarity nor absolution.

 

But, see, it's like when she told him about Planet Remina, or like when Luke told him about the weightless dream. If something can't be said now, then when? When do other people earn the right to our stories?

 

So Kylo stops at a cafe by the road, buys two coffees, which he and Rey and sip from white styrofoam cups in the parking lot as they lean against his car side by side. It's four in the afternoon and the temperature has started to plummet, although according to the weather forecast the snows will come late this year. Rey listens patiently, her breath fogging the air while Kylo tells her— well, everything. The whole sad, sorry tale. The blazing fights with his father, the prescription pills that didn't work, the running away, the mob boss called Snoke who'd taken a chance on a hired grunt and sent him to college and then law school, the car crash that killed Han Solo and Leia Organa, the regret. Everything.

 

It's dark by the time he's done. Remina has come burning into existence, overshadowing all the other stars. Rey dumps their empty cups into a nearby bin and walks back to Kylo quietly, approaching on tentative feet. He watches her, his hands in his pockets, his eyes narrowed and guarded, waiting for judgment or mercy, whichever of the two.

 

She stands on tiptoe so that she can wrap her arms around his neck. He starts; he can't remember the last time someone held him like this, the gentleness foreign yet more welcome than he's prepared for it to be. The flat of his palm rests on the small of her back as he buries his nose in her hair, and for a moment there is only the beat of her heart against his, ocean waves in the winter night as Hellstar Remina shines on over their heads.

 

*

 

Later that evening, Kylo dreams of the graffiti on Rey's wall. He's often heard it bandied about that you can't read in dreams, but his subconscious doesn't appear to have gotten the memo because there they are, the letters glistening blood-red over her shoulder as she tells him what will happen when two planets collide. _The curve of Remina will fill our sky,_ she's saying in his dream. _We will be weightless. We will float like angels._ She shifts position so that, somehow, her slim body blocks out the latter half of the bible passage, and all he can see are the words: _THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't expecting such a warm response to the first part! It was so amazing to come back from my trip to all the lovely bookmarks, comments, and kudos. Thank you, everyone, and thank _you,_ n1ff1n, for [the gorgeous moodboard](http://n1ff1n.tumblr.com/post/178826024994/fanfiction-aesthetics-the-surface-of-last). I hope this second and final installment doesn't disappoint. Please also check out the rest of [this year's RFFA collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RFFATwoSolitudesThatMeet), so many brilliant stories on there. Until next time!

**January 2018**

 

_"Man must rise above the Earth."_

_\- Socrates_

 

_"Citing a record low enrollment rate for the spring semester, Cornell University has officially closed its doors for the foreseeable future, joining an ever-growing list of American schools that have shut down since—"_

 

Click.

 

_"— economy is in shambles, absolutely_ no one _is going to work and who can blame them—"_

 

Click.

 

_"— The global manhunt for the originator of the Stardust Files came to an end yesterday in Prizren, when Interpol captured former NASA scientist Galen Erso at the Albanian border—"_

 

Click.

 

_"— mass migration to rural areas as people seek to return to their families and stockpile weapons and goods—"_

 

Click.

 

_"— This new church is called Cosmic Destiny and its members believe that Hellstar Remina is not a planet but, in fact, a mothership, on its way to gather the people of Earth and bring us back to our true home amidst faraway stars—"_

 

Slumped down on the couch, Kylo snorts, his thumb hovering above the remote control button as he prepares to change the channel again. Rey glances over at him from her seat at the dining table, her attention caught by the sound he made.

 

"It's not the _strangest_ delusion out there," she says— or, at least, he _thinks_ that's what she says. Rey apparently never learned not to talk with her mouth full, and her cheeks bulge with cereal and milk. "Some people _still_ think the whole thing's a hoax, like the moon landing."

 

Kylo remembers the geek in the Bigfoot shirt, waiting in line at Starbucks. He wonders where that kid is now. "I'm not surprised. It all boils down to coping mechanisms— the human brain is capable of devising an infinitude of lenses through which we can view and process our trauma," he says. "But if _I_ were to start a religion, I'd sure as hell come up with a better name than Cosmic Destiny. Little too on-the-nose."

 

"Mmm. Should I be worried that you're apparently _not_ as opposed to founding your own cult as any normal person would be?" Rey stands up to place her empty bowl in the sink to soak, and he watches her move through his apartment— or, well, he supposes it's _their_ apartment now. Her brown hair's gathered into a messy bun and she's clad only in one of his white polo shirts that ends halfway down her thighs, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

 

"Starting a cult doesn't sound so bad, if you factor in tax-exempt status and weird sex acts." Kylo gives her his best leer and she rolls her eyes, but walks over to him, anyway. "Is that a go for the weird sex acts, then?" he quips as she straddles him and runs her fingers through his hair.

 

"Actually, I was shooting for tax-exempt status," she replies with a smirk before kissing him full on the lips.

 

It never takes much to get Kylo going when Rey is concerned, and this occasion is no different. They don't bother shedding their clothes any more than is necessary— he's still wearing his sweater, with his jeans and boxers shoved down his hips, when he tugs her panties to the side and sheathes himself inside her, slipping the too-large white shirt off one bronzed shoulder so that he can nibble at her skin as she bounces on his lap. These days, it's only when they're like this that he feels truly alive, feels like he's doing something more than sleepwalking through his remaining time on Earth. He calls her _baby,_ whispers filthy encouragement in her ear, presses finger-shaped bruises into her ass and thighs. She revels in all of it, love-starved as she is, as they both are. After she comes, collapsing against him and burying her face in his neck, it's his turn to use her, lifting her up and dropping her down on his cock, setting a punishing pace as he fucks her through the aftershocks of her orgasm while she's too blissed out to do anything but gasp and moan and limply take it, take it all, until he floods her with his spend.

 

Ears ringing, every muscle turned to jelly, Kylo stretches out on the couch, taking Rey with him so that she's sprawled on his chest in a pliant heap. "Got plans today?" he asks her, rubbing her back. He wishes he could just stay in with her but he has a meeting with Snoke in a few hours.

 

"Coffee with Finn and Rose at Maz's," she drowsily replies, naming one of the few establishments in New York that have stayed open, its feisty old proprietor having declared that it would take more than a rogue planet to put Maz Kanata out of business.

 

A wicked idea occurs to Kylo. "Hey, keep my come inside you," he tells Rey, his sated cock mustering a valiant twitch at the mental image. "Want to think about it dripping down your thighs all day."

 

Rey wrinkles her nose. "Sounds like a UTI waiting to happen, but—" she shrugs— "I'll give it a shot. I can always order cranberry juice instead of coffee."

 

His palm descends on her ass in a light, playful spank, and she muffles a giggle into his collarbone. In the background, the TV continues to drone on about the apocalypse and the myriad different ways that people cope.

 

*

 

William Snoke was already old when Kylo first met him, and the decade that followed has not been kind. Snoke is a thin, crooked thing, hunched in on himself and gesturing with long, gnarled fingers. It's almost unthinkable that _this_ is the man who holds New York City in his grasp, at least until one looks into his eyes— they are unsettlingly bright and alert, set amidst the ruined contours of a pale, wrinkled face dotted with liver spots.

 

Under the scrutiny of such eyes, Kylo tries not to fidget in his seat at the mahogany conference table. They're the only ones in the dimly lit room, although Snoke's bodyguards are waiting just outside the doors. Not that there's much need for them— the First Order complex is impregnable, and Snoke's private wing doubly so.

 

"I've been thinking," the old man purrs, "about the day we met. Do you remember?"

 

Kylo nods. He'd been bussing tables at the seedy bar where Snoke's lackeys cornered some high-ranking members of a street gang who'd been encroaching on First Order territory, and Kylo had knocked the gang leader flat on his ass in the ensuing riot.

 

"I offered you a job with my organization because you had a fighter's heart," Snoke muses. "But before long I realized you had brains, too. And now look at what you've become, with my help."

 

"I will always be grateful, sir," Kylo cautiously replies, wondering what the old man is getting at.

 

Snoke issues a rueful sigh. "You've stood by my side as I built my empire, but now I worry that all of this will come to nought when the Hellstar arrives. We must devise some way to stop it. I think the girl is the key."

 

Kylo's heart stutters in his chest. "Sir?"

 

_"The girl,"_ Snoke repeats. "Remina Kenobi. We have to find her. Only then will we be able to defeat her namesake."

 

The shadows in the meeting room are long and deep but, if he squints, Kylo can just make out the wild gleam in Snoke's eyes. _Coping mechanisms,_ he thinks numbly, sweat gathering on the palms of his hands. _The human brain conceiving numerous ways to come to terms with doom._ Alien ships, judgment day, and now—

 

After Snoke dismisses him, Kylo runs into Armitage Hux at the front gates of the complex, smoking a cigarette. The lanky redhead in charge of the First Order's business dealings offers Kylo a curt nod. "Been a while since you graced us with your presence, Ren. How'd your meeting with Mr. Snoke go?"

 

Kylo hesitates. He and Hux don't get along, but there's a certain pointedness to the other man's question that tells him they're in agreement about one very specific thing. "He doesn't... seem well."

 

Hux snorts, a silver burst of smoke wreathing the cold January air. "He ordered several of his smaller companies dismantled last week, wants to pipe all those funds into a _science and research division."_ Hux spits out the last words, obviously in a bad mood. He'd never have taken Kylo into his confidence otherwise. "He's been going around saying that it's the First Order's destiny to stop Hellstar Remina. I've half a mind to resign."

 

"Why don't you, then?" Kylo goads.

 

"Don't think I won't, if this keeps up." Hux flicks his cigarette to the ground, stubs it out beneath the sole of one shiny leather shoe. "Goddamn apocalypse," he mutters, more to himself than to Kylo. "Everyone's hanging by a thread."

 

*

 

Kylo picks Rey up from her coffee date. She says goodbye to Finn and Rose outside Maz's, seemingly unperturbed by how the other two peer suspiciously into the idling car. Kylo wonders if Rey's told her friends about him, about _them,_ but he doesn't ask her until they're back at the apartment.

 

She nods. "I told them the whole story today. Finn said that, had this been a normal situation and not, like, some end-of-the-world thing, he'd think we're moving too fast." Her expression turns more solemn as she continues, "After Cornell closed up shop, they also relocated to the city to be closer to the international airports. You know, just in case the travel ban's lifted— Rose's family is in Saigon."

 

"I don't think it's going to be lifted," Kylo says. "Not anytime soon."

 

"Yeah." Rey leans her head on his shoulder, the way she does when she's feeling sad, as they slowly walk to the bedroom. "But are _you_ okay? You've got something on your mind."

 

Kylo rubs the small of her back— such a gesture is instinct now, whenever she tucks herself against him. He doesn't quite know what to say and so he settles on the truth, figuring they can only go up from there. "My boss has gone nuts and I think he wants you dead."

 

"Well, he'll have to get in line." They've reached the bedroom now, and Rey flops onto the mattress, taking a perennial childish delight in how soft it is, how she sinks into it. "Another reason why Finn, Rose, and I hang out at Maz's is that no other coffee shop wants to serve me."

 

"What coffee shops?" Kylo demands, narrowing his eyes.

 

"Doesn't matter. I'm just glad there's still a place where I don't have to worry about drinking spit lattes." Rey spreads her arms, holding them out to him with a smile. "It's cute how you're always ready to pick a fight, though."

 

"I won't let anyone hurt you," Kylo vows as he joins her on the bed.

 

Rey blinks, looking sad again for some reason. "Ben," is all she says, before she tugs at the collar of his shirt and he, as always, follows her down.

 

* * *

 

 

**March 2018**

 

_"Imagine you are living fifteen billion years ago. You would be surrounded by a very hot opaque plasma of electrons and protons. When the Universe cools down below a critical temperature, the fog clears instantaneously everywhere. But you would not be able to see that it has cleared everywhere because, as you look into the far distance, you would be seeing into the opaque past of distant parts of the Universe. As the Universe continues to expand and cool, you would always see the bright opaque fog in the distance, in the past. That bright fog is the surface of last scattering. It is the boundary between a transparent and an opaque universe and you can still see it today, fifteen billion years later."_

_\- Peter Coles,_ _The Routledge Critical Dictionary of the New Cosmology_

 

As if to make up for their belated arrival, the snows stick around well into spring. Rey complains about the cold, takes to bundling up in Kylo's sweaters and in scarves that hide the lower half of her face— although it's likely also an excuse to obscure her features when she's out in public because, as the Alliance continues to issue progress reports that report no progress at all, people start getting more outrightly hostile around her, bit by bit.

 

Kylo worries about her, can't stomach letting her out of his sight no matter how much she insists that she can take care of herself. The threat of Snoke's words from that January meeting is still fresh on his mind, although the old man seems to be taking his sweet time springing into action. Kylo doesn't even want to _think_ about what'll happen if Snoke learns he's shacking up with _the girl—_ he's change-the-locks, draw-the-curtains-shut paranoid, and the bulk of his and Rey's arguments these days stems mostly from the fact that, if it were up to him, she would never set one foot outside the apartment.

 

But it's never up to him, of course.

 

"You can't keep me locked in here forever!" she yells one particularly trying day. "I mean, shit, is this some kink you have—"

 

Kylo grits his teeth. Although he attempts to remind himself that, in a lot of ways, Rey is like him— that she lashes out at the most convenient target whenever she's feeling helpless— he still can't help his frustration from leaking through. "Fine," he snarls. "You want to get screamed at again by some random stranger while doing something as innocuous as buying milk, be my guest."

 

She pales at that, but it's too late for him to take it back. The drive to the grocery store is conducted in terse silence, as is most of the shopping. He throws food supplies into their cart like each parcel has committed a personal affront against him, and, when a stocky, middle-aged man clutching a carton of eggs _shoves_ Rey as he passes by, Kylo reaches breaking point.

 

_"Hey,"_ he barks, moving to grab the man's elbow, but—

 

— but Rey gets there before he does, sending the fucker sprawling to the floor with a well-placed uppercut, his carton of eggs smashed on the tiles in splinters of white shell and rivulets of yellow yolk.

 

_Goddamn apocalypse,_ Kylo remembers someone saying as he stares at Rey, her hand balled into a fist and her eyes wild as she looms over the cowering man. _Everyone's hanging by a thread._

 

*

 

Their groceries forgotten, Kylo ushers Rey out of the store before the situation can escalate. They fight as he drives back home, a nonsense fight, all teeth, all bile, and he ends up driving past the apartment and just keeps going with no clear destination in mind. This is how his parents died, he's sure of it, knowing them— he's constructed elaborate scenarios in his head for years, Han and Leia would have been yelling at each other and Han would have been going dangerously fast and the Falcon would have come to an ignoble end, hitting that truck at the intersection's red light with all the force of a new asteroid belt being born—

 

But, somehow, nothing happens. History does not repeat itself. Instead, Kylo slams on the brakes at the shores of Lake Nymeve just off the Takodana neighborhood in Brooklyn, and Rey tears out of the car like the hounds of hell are nipping at her heels, slamming the passenger door so hard he's vaguely surprised the window doesn't crack.

 

Lake Nymeve is a riotously green place in the summer months but, on this chilly March afternoon, it's all black sand and white snowdrifts beneath a gray sky. Kylo doesn't match Rey's frantic pace— he just follows her until she stops, right at the edge of the dark blue water, and whirls around to face him. They'd both started crying half an hour ago and, to him, she's blurred at the edges, silhouetted against false spring.

 

"I wish things were different," Rey tells Kylo, the cracks in her voice sounding out like fractures in the ice. "I wish you and I met some other way. I wish part of me doesn't think we're only together out of some bizarre compulsion of yours to save me because you couldn't save your parents—"

 

Kylo's already shaking his head in helpless protest, already reaching out to cup her face, that amazing face, in his hands, but she twists away from him. These are the things that have been building up for a while now. These are the things that need to be said. "And I wish—" For a moment she gets too choked up to continue, and then the words emerge as if they're being ripped from her throat— "I wish we didn't have so little time left. I thought I could resign myself to it, just take each day as it comes, but, God, I don't want to lose you, you make me afraid to die, and it's just— it's so fucking _unfair,_ Ben!"

 

Kylo has no idea, really, why he thinks of his father now. He almost resents the man for creeping into his memories at such an inopportune moment, but there he is, Han Solo, with the beat-up jacket and the wry smirk of surrender because he doesn't know what to do with his son. _The world isn't out to get you, kid. It is what it is._

 

"Okay." An eternity has passed before Kylo is capable of the act of speech. "Okay, look." He grabs Rey's wrists; she makes a half-hearted attempt to break free but he holds on tight. "Maybe you have a point. Maybe it _is_ unfair. Maybe this is all one sorry shitshow and it's not what we deserve, but— but maybe that also works both ways, you know? I didn't think I deserved you, either. Still don't, if I'm being completely honest." He closes the space between them and leans down to press his forehead to hers, the light fog of their breathing in the chill air mingling until it's impossible to tell which is which. "But I _also_ think that we have to take all the goodness and all the grace that we can get, now more than ever. It isn't fair, but it's what we _have._ It is what it is. So, please, I—" He presses a desperate kiss to the tip of her nose, and to the apples of her cheeks— "I want to spend it with you, the time that we have left. I want to face whatever's coming with you by my side, in my arms." She's still and silent for a beat too long, and he screws his eyes shut, burrowing his nose into her hair, wondering if this is the last time he'll ever be able to do so.

 

"I know you feel it, too," he mumbles. _"Please."_

 

She slips her wrists out of his hands so that she can lace their fingers together, there on the lake's half-frozen shores. It feels like goodness, it feels like grace.

 

* * *

 

 

**July 2018**

 

_"Star light, star bright,_

_The first star I see tonight;_

_I wish I may, I wish I might_

_Have the wish I wish tonight."_

_\- Unattributed nursery rhyme_

 

The Alliance makes a terrible announcement. _Ninka_ is gone. It had been conducting a routine flyover on Hellstar Remina's seas when an unidentified object had whipped out of the water and lashed straight at the probe. From what could be deduced of the grainy, chaotic footage, the thing that resembled a tentacle had wrapped around _Ninka_ and pulled it under. There had been a brief burst of static as the probe crashed into the sea, and then nothing.

 

And then the Hellstar had accelerated once again on its path towards Earth.

 

*

 

"There's something I haven't told you," Rey says later that night as she and Kylo lay in bed, her head pillowed on his arm. "It's the only thing I've ever kept from you, I promise."

 

Kylo touches her shoulder, to show that it's all right. "What is it?"

 

"I found Anakin Skywalker's notes while I was cleaning out Obi-Wan's study, back home in England. You and I were already texting then, but I didn't say anything because..."

 

She trails off, and Kylo finishes the sentence for her as he stares up at the dark ceiling.

 

"You thought he was a madman."

 

"A bit unhinged," Rey conscientiously corrects like she's afraid of hurting his feelings, "but not, like, _totally_ mad—"

 

Kylo lets out a surprised bark of laughter. "You don't have to sugarcoat it. I read his book. It was... out there."

 

_Out there_ is an understatement, of course. The book that had ended Anakin's career was a passionate treatise on extraterrestrial civilizations beyond the far edge of the Solar System. It had caused the young astronomer to be laughed out of all respected academic circles but, to an eleven-year-old boy reading it from cover to cover in his bedroom one summer day, it had been nothing short of brilliant.

 

"He said he made contact," Rey whispers, "in the Atacama Desert, while he was pulling an all-nighter with the VLT."

 

_The desert does strange things to people's heads,_ Kylo remembers overhearing Leia tell Luke. _All that open space, the isolation— he'd already been there for months, no wonder he started hearing aliens in his head—_

 

"He detected an energy burst," Rey continues, "which was afterwards proven to be a systems error, and then the voices started. He couldn't make out what they were saying but he theorized that we'd receive definitive proof of their existence soon— perhaps once they got a hold of _Voyager I_ and confirmed for themselves that we don't mean them any harm."

 

_Voyager I,_ launched in 1977. The Golden Record, containing photos of Earth and its lifeforms, scientific data, messages from the U.N. Secretary-General and President Carter, a medley of whalesong and breaking waves and the cry of a child, greetings in 55 different languages, music by Mozart and Blind Willie Johnson and Balkanska. Humanity's shout into the vast universe that _we're here, we're waiting._

 

"The probe entered the interstellar medium in 2012," Kylo remarks. "When was your grandfather informed that Remina was moving towards Earth?"

 

"Four years later," says Rey. "But it was _always_ moving towards Earth— it just didn't start accelerating until then."

 

They're both silent for a while, contemplating the possibilities. They're never going to tell anyone this, of course. It's too preposterous, too far-fetched. This is just a drowsy, late-night conversation between two people at the end of the world.

 

"Ben," Rey finally said, "do _you_ believe in..."

 

"Aliens?" Kylo shrugs. "I read my grandfather's book at a young and impressionable age. It was hard not to believe after that."

 

She turns slightly so that he feels her lips curve against his bare bicep in a small smile. "Is that why you got your tattoo?"

 

"Maybe," he grunts, a little sulky now. A little defensive. He's sixteen again, standing in the doorway of an illegal tattoo parlor with no scruples, wanting to piss his mother off. "What're you going to do about it?"

 

Rey giggles, and then she rolls over to straddle him in one swift, agile movement. Expecting a kiss, he closes his eyes— only for them to fly open again when she presses her lips to the first variable of the equation inked along the ladder of his ribs.

 

"The number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible," she recites from memory, before moving on to the next one. "The average rate of star formation in our galaxy..." Her mouth hums against his bones as she drifts lower. "The fraction of formed stars that have planets... the average number of planets that can potentially support life..." Her hot little tongue darts out to trace the _f1_ by his navel, which causes his already hardening cock to twitch in his boxers. "The fraction of those planets that actually develop life..."

 

She's inched down his boxers by the time she reaches the last variable, capping off her recitation with a quick little nibble to the spur of his hip. The sound he makes is caught between a laugh and a groan, and he buries his fingers in her hair as she swallows him whole.

 

*

 

After he and Rey drift off to sleep, Kylo dreams that he's standing in the desert, miles and miles of endless sand under a pale silver moon. Vague shapes loom in the distance— towering, lurking things, tall as mountains and with too many limbs. Their voices echo through his head in an ethereal, babbling chorus. The one word that he's able to make out is: _Soon._

 

* * *

 

 

**October 2018**

 

_"I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions... and for the first time we are becoming a part of it."_

_\- Carl Sagan,_ _Planetary Exploration_ _, page 15_

 

It's the people on the East Cape of New Zealand who see it first, in dawn's light, hanging low on the horizon like a second sunrise.

 

Morning gradually filters in to the rest of the globe— and, with it, judgment.

 

*

 

Kylo and Rey wake up late and so— by the time she looks out the window and gasps and drags him out onto the sidewalk, both of them still in their pajamas— Hellstar Remina is already high in the sky, a glowing blue-and-white orb the size of the moon.

 

_It's here,_ Kylo thinks numbly. It looks surreal in the daylight, crystalline and translucent over New York's skyscrapers. It must have put on a final burst of speed, because it has entered Earth's orbit far too soon, way before the Alliance's recalculated projections said it would.

 

He's so preoccupied with staring at it that it takes him a while to notice the general atmosphere of fear and tension pervading the street. Traffic is at a standstill, several cars with their doors flung open as if the passengers had given up so they could travel on foot instead. The first wave of panic must have passed while he and Rey slept, as evidenced by the lack of screaming and stampedes and, yet, the trail of bloodstains and broken glass on the concrete. There are people sitting on the sidewalk, crying. There's a group on their knees further down the street, praying. But there are some who are like him and Rey, stumbling out of their apartments in bedroom slippers and gazing, slack-jawed, at the planet in the sky.

 

"There she is!" A shrill scream splits the air. Kylo's eyes flicker from Earth's new satellite to its source— a woman from the building next door is pointing an accusing finger at Rey with an utterly manic look on her face. "It's her, it's Remina— _she's the one who brought this upon us!"_

 

For Kylo, there is no time to think, no time to do anything else but grab hold of a startled Rey and drag her back into their building as the crowd begins to stir and mutter and glare.

 

*

 

_"Planet Remina stopped moving at 5:45 AM, Eastern Time,"_ Mon Mothma announces from Alliance headquarters. _"It is currently 371,836 kilometers from Earth. We will be sending up a fully armed, fully equipped team to discern its nature and to determine the best way to either knock it out of its path or destroy it entirely. In the meantime, please remain calm—"_

 

But it's a lost cause. Like every other city on Earth, New York has been _remaining calm_ for the past year, its inhabitants sunk deep into an existential malaise. It has been hanging by a thread, and now—

 

— now the thread _snaps—_

 

*

 

Kylo and Rey watch the city go up in flames from the large glass windows of the penthouse suite. The TV crackles with frantic updates of riots, mass suicides, and flares of armed conflict all around the globe— updates that grow more infrequent as the days pass, one news channel after another winking out of existence.

 

Calls from Snoke go unanswered. _Let the old man think I'm dead or that I've left,_ Kylo decides the first time he ignores his phone screen lighting up with his boss' name. It's not terribly far-fetched— people are evacuating in droves, the bridges jammed with vehicles despite the lock-down ordered by an increasingly desperate government. In all honesty, though, Kylo's not sure why people bother. It's not like there's anywhere left to run _to._

 

He's grateful that he and Rey had had the presence of mind to stock up whenever they could. They have enough food and water to last them a couple of months, plus medicines and flashlights and a handful of fully-charged power banks for when the electricity gives out— as it probably will any day now, judging from how the line sputters and half of the city is already shrouded in total darkness come the night. They've barricaded the door with all the furniture in the apartment, including the bed, and they sleep on a comforter spread out over the carpeted living room floor, loath to be too far from the TV that's their only connection to the rest of the world at this point— wifi and cellular data signals have become intermittent and, in any case, the Internet is a _mess._

 

Kylo sometimes catches Rey scrolling through the old fan blogs that had been dedicated to her. Most have simply stopped posting, but some have piled on the vitriol, the madness. _Where is she— she betrayed us— she must answer for this—_ and it's during these times that he firmly takes her phone from her hands and either holds her or fucks her, whatever she's in the mood for. They exist as bodies in the space between heartbeats now, as lifelines adrift in the reckoning.

 

It's not long before there's a different although no less worrying undercurrent that trickles into the fringes of all the online chatter— rambling posts on obscure message boards, throwaway mentions on social media feeds. _Snoke will save us— the First Order will save us— they've been preparing for this for a very long time—_

 

"We should've left while we had the chance," Rey muses one afternoon. She's wearing another one of his button-down shirts, curled up on the ledge by the window and gazing idly at the luminous sphere that is Remina. In the same way that the sunlight can be seen to shine through the glassy edges of the Hellstar, so does day’s radiance dance in golden patterns along Rey's skin. "We could be up in the mountains by now."

 

"And how would _that_ be an improvement over our current dystopian situation?" Kylo asks.

 

"Better scenery?" she ventures. "Anyway, it's just nice to think about. You and me and the wilderness."

 

Kylo has to admit that _does_ sound nice, but then Rey continues in a dreamy sort of tone, "I could learn how to, like, skin a bear or something."

 

He wrinkles his nose at her. "I have no desire to subsist on bear meat. That sounds vile."

 

"Not so bad, I've heard. Depends on what the individual bear's been eating—"

 

"And here I thought you were trying to be romantic," he deadpans. "Log cabin in the woods and fireplace and all. Instead, we're up to our elbows in the blood and guts of one of North America's most vulnerable species."

 

"Blood and guts don't sound romantic to you?" She sighs in mock disappointment. "Pity. I so wanted you to be the one."

 

He laughs, marveling at how she can still make him laugh, even now. It's a blessing, all things considered, and he shows his appreciation by kissing her up against the window. It's a forest fire, it always is between them, the chaste brush of lips quickly blazing out of control as he sweeps his tongue into her mouth and she rakes her nails down his spine. He soon falls to his knees before her, tugging her underwear down her legs, and she hikes the borrowed button-down up her thighs to grant him better access.

 

He eats her out while her back is pressed against the window, the city in ruins below them. He wonders if anyone can see— he knows there are tons of people who, unable to leave New York, have stormed their way upwards, breaking into offices and other penthouses in the hopes that the added height will grant a modicum of sanctuary from the chaotic streets, even if it means that they'll be the first to die when Remina comes crashing down. Any of those people could be looking out right this instant, watching Rey grind against his mouth and tug at his hair.

 

Kylo doesn't mind; in fact, it's the exact opposite. Determined to give those accidental voyeurs the show of their lives, he takes Rey's clit between his lips and _sucks,_ making her cry out his name, all throaty and ragged. Maybe the apocalypse has made him crazy, too, but it's so hard to care. He _wants_ someone to see them, to see him and Rey taking their pleasure under the ominous gaze of the Hellstar. They won't go gently into the night. They are wild things.

 

*

 

_Rogue One_ is launched on the first-year anniversary of Obi-Wan's death, which— yeah, there's probably some form of healthy irony there that a dozen thinkpieces would have rushed to articulate, if only anyone still had the inclination to write or read thinkpieces. The weaponized spacecraft is marked as experimental, a whole new beast that the Alliance has been developing for years. There are rumors that Galen Erso's daughter is part of the crew, and lots of speculation on how this came to be. Some say that Erso himself is languishing at the ADX in Colorado, while others maintain that he was executed immediately after his capture in Prizren.

 

It will take _Rogue One_ approximately three days to reach Remina, bearing humanity's last hopes on its wings. On the second day from launch, one of the few civilian radio stations still in operation transmits a message from Snoke. His voice drifts over the airwaves, smooth and persuasive and rich. A salesman's voice, which lends an even starker chill to the contents of his message as Kylo and Rey listen in while doing the dishes.

 

_"_ Rogue One _will meet the same fate as_ Ninka. _This is just another delaying tactic to keep us sedated, to prevent us from fighting back. Our government has failed us. The Alliance has failed us. If we wish to survive, we must take matters into our own hands."_ Snoke speaks as someone who is absolutely confident of the truth of his words, who knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that what he's doing is right. These are the most dangerous people of all. _"Bring me the girl who brought the planet. Bring Remina Kenobi to the First Order. The key to our salvation lies in her sacrifice. I have seen it."_

 

The plate that Rey's washing slips from her hands, clatters into the sink. Kylo's gaze automatically shifts to the backpacks stashed by the door, the ones they'd prepared just in case they need to make a quick getaway, the ones they'd filled with what they'd need to survive just a little while longer.

 

*

 

In the end— which is to say, two days later— they barely have time to grab those backpacks as an angry mob tries to break down the door. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together— some of the people on the other side have probably seen Rey coming and going in times past. They've left well enough alone until now, until they've become unhinged enough and desperate enough to trust in Snoke. The human brain devises an infinitude of lenses through which we view and process trauma. The human brain will latch on to anything that means there's a chance to live.

 

There's a little balcony off to the side of the penthouse unit that leads into a fire escape winding down to the alleyway beside the apartment building. It's thirty-seven flights of stairs, but it's not like they have any other choice.

 

Or maybe Kylo does. Rey offers it to him, one foot already on the top step. "Ben, you don't have to do this," she says. "I can't ask you to go on the run with me. I can go alone."

 

"You're not asking, I'm offering," he tells her, echoing his own words from— so long ago now, it seems. He touches her face, the sound of splintering wood echoing through the apartment as the door and the furniture give way. "You're not alone."

 

She kisses him, soft and fierce all at once, and then they begin the descent.

 

*

 

Despite what he saw on the news, Kylo's totally unprepared for how _nuts_ everything is. It's every zombie movie rolled into one, minus the zombies— although, the way things are going, he won't be surprised if the bastards start rearing their ugly heads. Everywhere he and Rey turn there are stores being ransacked, car crashes, fistfights, stampedes, and people screaming for the loved ones they lost in the crowds, so many names swallowed up by the gunshots and sirens that pierce the air in a ceaseless, muddled roar.

 

Kylo is _also_ unprepared for what a _savage_ Rey turns out to be. Between the two of them, they've got one Smith  & Wesson 686— he could hardly have been Snoke's private lawyer without carrying some form of protection— but, soon enough, Rey's managed to arm herself with a baseball bat that she snagged from the shattered display window of a sporting goods store. That bat is put to good use as they are accosted by strangers— some who recognize her, some who just want to steal their backpacks. It's kind of ridiculous, but it's never quite hit Kylo how _in love_ he is with Rey until he sees her break a man's nose with a well-aimed swing.

 

"Baby," he gasps out as they pause to catch their breath by the tattered remnants of a Dunkin' Donuts, "I think you've got some unresolved issues."

 

"This is nothing." Rey flashes him a grin that's almost feral, her hair askew and her knuckles stained with blood. "You should've seen me during midterms."

 

*

 

They reach Maz's in the late afternoon, exhausted and covered in scrapes and bruises. Rey had argued that this is their best bet for a safe space, as the proprietor lives above the shop and Rey considers her a friend. The windows have been boarded up with tables and chairs such that it's impossible to see the interiors, but Kylo pounds a heavy fist against the door until it creaks open and—

 

— and he's staring down the nozzle of an honest-to-God _flamethrower—_

 

"Maz, come on," Rey calls out, disturbingly unperturbed. "It's me. This is Ben."

 

A wrinkled, bespectacled face peers out through the crack in the door. "Fine time for me to be meeting the boyfriend," Maz grumbles. "Get inside, hurry, I've already had to fight off two mobs today."

 

Inside, the shop is gloomy and bare, the furniture and most of the coffee-making equipment having been sacrificed to the barricades. There are ten other people who have taken refuge here as well, huddled by the counter, and among them are—

 

_"Rey!"_

 

Finn and Rose immediately spring to their feet, tackling their friend in a tangle of limbs and _oh, my God, we're so glad you're all right._ Rey's laughing in relief as she hugs them back, and Kylo's never heard a more beautiful sound.

 

_"Ben?"_ an incredulous— and decidedly far less beautiful-sounding— voice calls out. _"Ben Solo?"_

 

Kylo turns toward the source. The first person he sees is Luke, who is also gaping at him, frozen in the act of bandaging the leg of the man who had uttered Kylo's birth name.

 

"Jesus fucking Christ," Kylo mutters under his breath, before nodding coolly at his uncle's patient. "Dameron."

 

*

 

Poe is, given the circumstances, far too eager to catch up. He happily talks Kylo's ear off as Luke resumes bandaging his wound, and it's only then that Kylo notices the dazed look in his former classmate's dark eyes.

 

"Rum," Luke supplies, noticing Kylo's expression. "Flyboy here got shot in the leg and Maz poured a whole bottle down his throat before she carved the bullet out with a pocketknife. I think he'll live, though— if the hangover doesn't finish him off."

 

"One can only hope," Kylo drawls, deliberately leaving it ambiguous which bit he's referring to. "But what are _you_ doing here?" he asks Luke, ignoring Poe's drunken monologue.

 

"I got _stuck_ here. I was visiting Lando— you remember your Uncle Lando— when Remina drew near. We got separated during the first wave of riots but he's all right, last I heard from him over the phone. He's got friends in high places so he's bargaining to get a chopper out to our location. It might take a while, though."

 

Poe claps Kylo on the shoulder. "But enough about me! What have you been up to? How's things?"

 

Kylo shakes his head and walks away. There's too much going on right now to deal with this blast from the past.

 

*

 

Maz declares that everyone needs to pull their weight for as long as they're under her roof. Kylo spends the rest of the day fashioning Molotov cocktails out of syrup bottles and, when night falls, he takes first watch, sitting by the door with his revolver as the other people in the coffee shop stir restlessly on the floor, conversing in low, tense tones until they succumb to exhaustion and drift off.

 

This particular neighborhood is fairly quiet; sometimes, Kylo hears heavy footsteps marching past the shop and the tinkle of breaking glass and explosions in the distance, but it's otherwise an uneventful shift. Whenever he peers out through the gaps in the furniture to check the streets, his gaze is always invariably drawn to Hellstar Remina, gleaming against the black like a cold, pale coin, presiding serenely over the havoc it has wrought.

 

Finn relieves him after a few hours, the two men exchanging awkward nods, and Kylo stumbles through the gloom towards the corner that Rey has claimed, where his empty sleeping bag is spread next to her own. She's snoring, and he automatically curls his body around hers, wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzling into her nape.

 

This wakes her up. She drowsily smiles at him over her shoulder. "Hi."

 

"Hey." Kylo's tired, and what they had gone through today is a grim reminder of their fleeting mortality. That's why he starts to tell her, "I love—"

 

Rey shakes her head, stoppering the _you_ on the tip of his tongue. "Don't say it," she begs. "If you say it now, it's going to sound like goodbye. No goodbyes. Not until the very end. Promise me."

 

"Okay." He tightens his grip on her waist and buries his face in the slope of her neck. "Okay."

 

*

 

_"It's not a planet."_ Cassian Andor's static-tinged transmission to Earth lights up the airwaves the next morning. He sounds excited, for some reason. _"It's—"_

 

But that's as far as he gets, the signal sputtering into nothingness.

 

"'It's not a planet'?" Rose echoes incredulously. "Then what the hell _is_ it?"

 

Maz glances around the shop, her lips moving silently as she counts. Finally, she says, "We're missing one."

 

After a thorough inspection of the ground floor and the upper level, it's concluded that DJ, the smooth talker with the hooded eyes, must have nipped out the back door during the night. He'd taken some of the rations and, laughably enough, Maz's silverware, as if there's still a pawnshop in operation anywhere in the city.

 

"Guess he got tired of sitting around and waiting for death," Poe grumps, massaging his aching temples. "I mean, same, but, you know—" He gestures to his wounded leg.

 

Poe's markedly less amiable towards Kylo without the social lubrication afforded by alcohol. The two men regard each other warily over the cold pork-and-beans that serves as the group's breakfast, everyone digging into the huge can with plastic forks. Kylo's already preparing for a fight— perhaps even _spoiling_ for one. Han and Leia had adored Poe, the golden boy who made decent grades and who would go to college on an athletic scholarship and who didn't specialize in making everyone's lives miserable with actions that he himself couldn't really trace the root cause of. And Poe had, in turn, been devoted to his _Aunt Leia,_ and if he gives Kylo any grief for running away at eighteen or not coming to the funeral, Kylo's going to put a fist through that smugly perfect face—

 

But, in the end, Poe just shrugs, like someone laying something to rest, and turns to talk to Kaydel.

 

Kylo doesn't know if he's disappointed or relieved.

 

"What do you think happened to _Rogue One?"_ Finn asks.

 

"Probably signal interference," says Luke. "Either the planet's atmosphere is too charged to sustain audio transmissions, or—" His blue eyes twinkle— "it's really _not_ a planet, but some kind of ship with communication-jamming technology."

 

"A ship that looks like a planet," Rose deadpans. "Well, in that case, the Cosmic Destiny people must be rejoicing right about now."

 

"Maybe the _Rogue One_ crew just lost their marbles," Tallie opines. "Hellstar Remina could have all sorts of toxic gases and stuff. We'll never know, will we?"

 

"That's certainly the more scientific explanation," Luke agrees with an affable nod.

 

"You're trolling, Professor," Rey complains.

 

Luke chuckles. His gaze lingers on how her free hand is resting on Kylo's knee, but, if he's bewildered by this turn of events, he doesn't show it.

 

*

 

It's an hour later when the Alliance releases an official statement that they've lost all contact with _Rogue One,_ and it's another hour after that when First Order thugs descend on Maz's coffee shop.

 

"DJ must have snitched!" Rose spits out as the group takes defensive positions by the door and windows. "That snake—"

 

"I'll see him in hell!" Maz roars, flamethrower at the ready. "But you, you, and you—" She waves her hand at Finn, Rose, and Kylo— "better get Rey out of here _now!"_

 

"We'll hold them off." Luke starts to reach for the box of Molotov cocktails and, before he even knows what he's doing, Kylo opens his mouth to protest, but Luke merely touches his nephew's face. "It's all right, Ben. It's all right."

 

There is a strange, burning lump in Kylo's throat. "Uncle Luke—"

 

"This one didn't go so well," Luke interrupts, "but maybe next time, eh?" He smiles, an old man completely at peace, and it's hard to tell whether he's talking in terms of days or lifetimes— because, if _anyone_ believes in multiple universes, it's physicists, who smashed particles of matter together in 2012 and witnessed God in the fallout. "See you around, kid."

 

Despite his injured leg, Poe escorts Kylo, Rey, Finn, and Rose to the back door to provide some cover for their escape. Kylo's the last to duck out into the alley, and Poe catches his arm.

 

"Ben, listen," he says. "The last time I ever spoke to Leia, she told me that she and Han missed you and that they didn't blame you for anything. Not one bit of it, understand? So take that for what it's worth, and don't let it go to waste. Okay?"

 

Kylo nods, and Poe flashes one last trademark cocksure smirk before turning the other way to open fire on the approaching horde.

 

*

 

They manage to evade the nets of the First Order for only a handful of hours— which isn't much, but it is what it is.

 

Rey had drawn her scarf over the lower half of her face as usual, but it's tugged away during a skirmish with yet more frantic souls at wit's end, who eye backpacks like prizes, like water in the desert. They are spotted by one of the many gangs that rove through the streets shouting Rey's name, exhorting everyone to bring her to Snoke as they brandish old tabloid photos of her in the air.

 

There are too many of them. Kylo, Rey, Finn, and Rose are overwhelmed by the swarm, by grimy fingers and makeshift weapons and snarling teeth.

 

_It_ is _a zombie movie,_ is Kylo's last, nonsensical thought, before he is hit over the head and there is nothing.

 

*

 

He's jolted back to consciousness by someone kicking him in the ribs and—

 

— and _of course_ it's Hux—

 

"Retirement package not lucrative enough for you, I take it?" Kylo snipes at the redhead as a couple of Snoke's burly bodyguards force him to his feet. The first thing Kylo notices is that it's almost sunset. The second is that his hands are tied behind his back and he's pretty sure he's bleeding from where they bashed his head in. Then again, the warm wetness trickling down the back of his neck could just be sweat. You never know.

 

Hux meets Kylo's gaze, his gray-blue eyes as distant and as cold as the Arctic Circle. And just as mad as Snoke's had been in January. "I don't want to die," he says.

 

_Joke's on you, then,_ Kylo nearly retorts, but it's at that point that he notices they're on the front lawn of the First Order complex and he's being shoved through a gap in the torch-bearing crowd. Torches? In daytime? He shakes his head in an attempt to clear it, but the movement only brings a world of pain that threatens to split his skull in half.

 

The eerily silent assembly has formed a circle. In the middle of it is Rey, tied to a stake that has been driven deep into the earth. And suddenly the reason for the torches becomes all too clear.

 

_Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live._

 

They've roughed her up some but she's alert, her eyes fixed on Kylo as he's pushed towards her. He tries to tell her that it's okay, that they're going to find some way out of this, but he doesn't have the heart to lie. They're always honest with each other— that's how they've been able to stay together for so long, despite all this, despite who they are.

 

The crowd parts again to let Snoke through. He walks with a cane, his beady eyes fixed on Kylo and Rey, holding the Smith & Wesson in his free, shriveled hand.

 

"My boy," he says, sounding regretful. "How could it have come to this? If only you'd told me earlier. I could have saved you from her corruption."

 

Kylo doesn't respond. He's looking at Finn and Rose over Snoke's shoulder, the two of them having been made to kneel at the edge of the circle. Like him, their hands are tied behind their back, but he notices that the crescent pendant Rose wears around her neck is gone and her arms seem to be moving slightly as she stares ahead with the _blankest_ of looks.

 

The _very sharp_ crescent pendant, Kylo remembers now.

 

"It's not too late," Snoke croons. "I believe in second chances. You may still redeem yourself, Kylo Ren, and, in doing so, be the one to save us all."

 

And he offers the gun to Kylo.

 

It's a test. It always is. There's nowhere left to run, and Snoke knows that Kylo knows that. The sun has begun to sink behind the buildings, and Hellstar Remina shines as bright as day.

 

Kylo takes the gun. He turns his head to look at Rey. "No goodbyes, right?"

 

"Ben," she whispers, her hazel eyes brimming with unshed tears. God, he's made her cry so many times. He'd take it all back, if he could.

 

He's looking into her eyes when he pulls the trigger. He's looking into her eyes when Snoke drops to the ground, the triumphant grin on his face fading into a look of absolute shock, blood trickling from where the Smith & Wesson's bullet had hit its mark, watering the grass like red, red rain.

 

*

 

Between the two of them, and with the help of the crescent pendant, Finn and Rose had managed to cut themselves loose, and they spring into action before Snoke's corpse can even hit the ground, overpowering their surprised guards and divesting them of their carbine rifles. They create enough of a commotion that Kylo has time to free Rey from the stake, and then all four of them are running, are fighting their way through the confused, screaming throng and into the First Order building.

 

The crowd eventually gives chase.

 

*

 

The four of them make it all the way to the rooftop, bolting the hatch with the lead pipe that Rey had wrestled out of somebody's hands— not that _that's_ going to hold the First Order and its devotees off for very long.

 

"Shit, fuck, shit." Finn is chanting and pacing, peering over the ledge like he thinks some exit will magically appear. "What do we do now?"

 

Rose fishes her phone out of her coat pocket with trembling hands. "I'll call 911 or the police or— or something—" There's an edge of hopelessness to her tone, because if the emergency hotlines had been of any help since day one of the riots, they wouldn't be in this predicament.

 

Kylo, meanwhile, has wrapped Rey in his arms, sprinkling her temple with kisses as she takes ragged gasps of air against his chest, both of them too shaken to speak.

 

And that's when— _it_ happens.

 

*

 

Hellstar Remina pulses in the red-gold sunset. That's the only way to describe it. Some form of energy emanates from the sphere, throbbing like a single heartbeat, and washes over the world.

 

The message overrides all communication frequencies on Earth. It's transmitted to every television channel and every radio station still in operation. It's coursed through every cellular network that still stands. Everyone who still has an Internet connection sees it.

 

Rose sees it, blinking on her screen as she attempts to dial for help once more.

 

Maz, Luke, Poe, and the others still fighting the good fight at the coffee shop hear it, crackling over the radio.

 

It's written in strings of binary and Morse code and various alphabets. It's uttered in a mechanical voice in different languages, all meaning the same thing.

 

**_WE COME IN PEACE._ **

 

*

 

New York, like every other city on Earth, stills bit by bit as the message is disseminated to the populace.

 

Helicopters take to the air, issuing orders for people to stay where they are, emergency services are coming to help, the worst is over.

 

Kylo, Rey, Finn, and Rose are still on the rooftop when dusk falls and Hellstar Remina continues to shed its radiant light over humankind. Like the others, Kylo can't take his eyes off of it, but he feels Rey rest her head on his shoulder.

 

"I wonder what they want," she muses.

 

* * *

 

_"This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."_

_\- The Voyager Golden Record_

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/kylorenvevo)!


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